I'm trying to think of anything more culturally irrelevant than tennis. New Age music festivals? Sport fishing and rare book auctions also come to mind. Here's how irrelevant the sport has become: Eleven days ago a U.S. Davis Cup team led by Andy Roddick beat Sweden in the quarterfinals on American soil, and it only merited a brief mention on the nightly sportscasts. You probably missed it, because Tiger Woods's slump seemed so much more important at the time. So did Sean Penn's political views, and Pete Rose's future, and Lesley Stahl's hair style.

Tennis is dead. It has been dead before, but at the moment it's dead without precedent. Combine aloof players with basic business errors, and what you have is a sport with no heartbeat. In an effort to resuscitate it, a hapless alphabet soup of governing bodies this week joined with ESPN in trumping up something called the "U.S. Open Series," a six-week summer season of big-bonus televised tournaments. The idea is to get tennis on TV more regularly, provide audiences with a better sense of continuity and familiarity with players, and thereby bring back the game. We'll see.

The question is whether the public wants more of something that they're already not watching.

Here are just a few of the spectator sports with better attendance figures than tennis, according to a 2002 survey in the Sports Business Journal: rodeo, soccer and greyhound racing.

The reason for this new big deal "series" – which by the way is only the most recent gimmicky "series" in tennis – is that the USTA, along with the ATP men's tour and the Women's Tennis Association, badly needed some kind of lightning rod because TV ratings have been so perilously weak lately. ESPN's numbers for its men's tennis events are off 33 percent from two years ago; only 249,000 households tuned in per telecast in 2003, and while women's tennis is slightly better, it's still flat, off by 5 percent, with 365,000 households tuning in per show.

Even the four Grand Slam events, which historically have always managed to consistently interest audiences, have seen precipitous ratings drops. Unless Andre Agassi or Venus and Serena Williams are in the final, people just don't seem to care like they used to. Last year's U.S. Open final between Roddick and top-ranked Juan Carlos Ferrero produced a 3.5 rating, a 44 percent fall from the previous year. Justine Henin-Hardenne's victory over No. 1 Kim Clijsters got a 2.5, down a precipitous 52 percent. And at Wimbledon, Roger Federer's victory over Mark Philippoussis drew the lowest overnight U.S. television rating on record for a men's final at the All England Club.

What happened? Why is tennis, which ruled the airwaves and enjoyed packed arenas in the 1970s and '80s, and even three years ago still had some buzz, suddenly falling so flat with the public in the millennium? The answer comes in the form of another question: Why should we watch a sport that even the players seem disinterested in? Especially when we can log on to the Internet and shop on ****, or check our Blackberries, or click on a DVD?

You can put all the tennis on television that you want, but it won't alter the fact that the sport is driven by its stars and personalities, and at the moment there is a problematic cast at the top of both the men and women's games. Venus and Serena Williams don't even play their own sport; all they do is withdraw from tournaments with injuries and have dalliances with other professions, from fashion designing to acting, and turn up for an isolated trophy here or there. The men aren't much better. Six top players withdrew from the Monte Carlo Open this week, including top-ranked Federer, Agassi, Roddick, James Blake and Mardy Fish.

There is one thing no network or governing body or tricked-up schedule can do, and that's make the players play.

Golf, once a narrow and boring rich white man's game, has become the far more populist and connective sport – and one annually rated by sponsors as giving the most satisfaction to its financial backers, too. While tennis has done a swan dive over the last year, consider the LPGA. Attendance for the 33-event tour rose 9 percent last season, and 12 percent in 2002. Its network viewership was up 4 percent last year and a whopping 21 percent in 2002.

Tennis is a complicated failure. No one party or factor can be solely blamed. The problem is not fragmented internationalism, or a lack of stars. Federer is a pleasure to watch, an interesting and amiable man who is possessed of some of the most gorgeous strokes ever. It's not his fault, or that of Kim Clijsters, that the sport is in what might be called a star-transition and we simply don't know them as well yet as we know, say, Agassi or Monica Seles.

But it is the fault of the governing bodies that technology is ruining the quality of the game, and fields have become cluttered, with too many tournaments and too many indistinguishable players. Six male finalists turned up in Grand Slam finals in 2003, guys who shot up from the bottom 100s, guys like David Nalbandian, Guillermo Coria and Thomas Johansson. This is not to say they are unworthy or uninteresting. But at a certain point it's difficult to keep track of Jiri Novak, Sjeng Schalken and Paradorn Srichaphan plus a half dozen Argentines and another six or seven Spaniards who float in and out of the top 20 and various finals. As many as thirty players are liable to win ATP events in a season.

Equipment has something to do with it. Both John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova have each remarked that racket technology makes the game "too easy" with the result that too many players play exactly alike. Matches are generic, strokes homogenized, with fewer interesting contrasts in styles, or changeups.

This makes it hard for the public to connect with much of anyone. Contrast that with the game we watched in the 1970s and '80s, when there were more clear-cut rivals: Ivan Lendl showed up in 19 Grand Slam finals, and John McEnroe in 10, and we knew they didn't like each other. No wonder we tuned in.

It's taken a collective effort of lousy marketing, bad business practices, and apathetic players over a period of many years, but the end result is clear: Tennis has slowly but surely dislocated its audience, both physically and emotionally. It has squandered its star power, its history and its tradition. So can the new Open series and ESPN save tennis? Only if it manages to personalize the game again. Only if it manages to make the Federers and Clijsters come alive in our imaginations as the next great creative geniuses, the natural and personable successors in a traditional yet vivid and lively sport, the one we always loved.

If it doesn't do that, then the game is gone for good.
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And to think I was recently assured on these very boards that the public was holding its collective breath to see how many "shields" Roddick could gather.
The ratings will only get worse until a free-market golf type system replaces the atrophied alphabet soup confusion currently entrenched.

Are you sure, Jack. Weren't they telling you that Andy wouldn't win another one? :lol:

But seriously, this article shows the truth about tennis. And thanks for posting it.

I think a few of us have tried to generate interest in current tennis, but it's not easy. Folks want to discuss the good old days, and well, perhaps they were. But that isn't going to help the future of tennis.

I'm doing what I can for the future of tennis. But perhaps others should step up to the plate as well.

From the article: "Equipment has something to do with it. Both John McEnroe and Martina Navratilova have each remarked that racket technology makes the game "too easy" with the result that too many players play exactly alike. Matches are generic, strokes homogenized, with fewer interesting contrasts in styles, or changeups. This makes it hard for the public to connect with much of anyone."

There is some truth to this - as with several points in the article.

As well, I've said before that the gap between the pro game and the recreational game is larger now than ever before. Twenty or thirty years ago, people could watch the pros, and feel that "hey, I can do that". Now, though, this is not at all the case, as the pro game incorporates much more power and spin than the fans can readily identify with. The result is a distiction and distance which has resulted in tennis becoming a mere 'recreational activity' - as Joe wrote (in the 'Odds &amp; Ends' thread revealing this article), people today play tennis primarily to stay in decent shape, or even as a social activity. The seriousness and competitiveness of tennis on a recreational level is no more. The rapidly diminishing production of TRUE 'players frames' is surely evidence of this unfortunate turn of events.

As for the comparison with golf, we need to remember that golf still looks easy to play. When we watch the pros, we can still think "hey, I can do that", just as we did 20 and 30 years ago. With tennis, the difference between the pro game and the game the fans play has simply become far too significant.

I never thought of that, as I figured no one could aspire to be Tiger/Phil M. Just as no one could aspire to be Roger/Andy.

But are you saying that golfers can look on TV, and think they can be Tiger or Phil. Or at least mimic their strokes and perhaps improve their games.

But tennis club players look at Roger/Andy/Guillermo/Carlos, etc., and think no way?? I'm not even going to try to go there (which is a good thing re Andy's serve, IMO :lol

I'm just wondering, as it may explain why one "sport" is more popular than the other, even though one (tennis) seems way more interesting from a spectator's point of view.

Interesting discussion. I mean that seriously. I've often wondered why golf is more popular than tennis, as the former seems dull to me.

But so many people I know play golf, well into their retirement years. Perhaps that has something to do with it.

And when I was in Delray for Davis Cup, there were a few media folks there who wanted the Bryans to finish up quickly so they could follow the golf Masters. So that kind of told me something there. :wink:

Of course, I don't mean to say that any scratch golfer CAN play like Woods or Mickelson - I mean only that fans/recreational players can more easily THINK they can duplicate the pro shots because, relative to today's pro tennis, pro golf appears to be an easier reach for fans/recreational players, and so they can identify with it more easily than tennis fans/recreational players can identify with the pro version of tennis.

When Pat Rafter came back to play doubles earlier this year, he remarked on how the ATP had changed. That all the "guys" are hitting the ball harder, etc., and he said he didn't think he could make it on today's ATP in singles. And he's been gone less than two years.

The game has progressed a lot. There are lots of issues there, but your point is a good one. A decent golfer figures he/she can learn from the golf pros.

A decent tennis player may seem a bit more removed from the best ATP/WTA tennis players.

"star transition" as noted earlier is definitely a big reason why the game (at least men's) is on a low note right now.

Sampras, Chang, Courier, Becker, all gone....and Agassi is on his last year or two.

The new stars are just starting to sink their feet into their careers. The "ESPN destroying tennis" is definately hurting this, because almost EVERY telecast is an Agassi or Roddick match, and even now a bit of Fish and Blake, which just smells like Patrick MacEnroe flexing his muscles and showing off his davis cup team. The tv is not being kind to the other players.

And what's interesting too is that when i was at the NASDAQ last month, the people at the tournament were interested in Henman, Nadal, Federer, and i was amazed at the support that Tommy Haas got. Just imagine if some of these players got more tv time.

I would use the word evolved here rather than ‘progressed’, Susan. Evolution is inherent with time, and can be either positive or negative in nature. Evolution is, simply, change. Progress, meanwhile, at least implies that an improvement has taken place - and that is entirely and independently subjective.

Of the comparison between golf and tennis again... Touching on your mention that people play golf well into their retirement years... We can look at the differences in age between golf and tennis, and its inherent implications, as part of the reason that golf is more popular. Tennis obviously requires more physical exertion than does golf. As such, comparatively speaking, tennis generally draws younger participants than does golf. The same, I believe, can be said of each sport’s respective fan base. Likely for this reason, tennis has become significantly more ‘MTV-like’ than has golf. The pro tennis players are younger than pro golf players, generally, and tennis fans are also generally younger than golf fans. Compare pro tennis players to pro golfers, and I believe most people would agree that pro golfers are more mature overall. While the ‘boring’ Pete Sampras is the exception in tennis, the flamboyant, attention getting golfer (can’t even think of any, except perhaps Tiger Woods) is very much the exception in golf. Pro golfers have much more in common with Sampras than they do with Roddick, or Blake, or Kournikova, or Sharapova. The same can be said of fans – golf fans being more mature than tennis fans, owing to the age factor (usually). The younger generation, which we can refer to as the ‘MTV generation’, lives significantly more of an ‘instant gratification’ type of lifestyle than do the older generations who play and watch golf. This being the case, the younger generation is far more likely to jump from one thing to the next rather quickly. Their attention span is shorter, owing mostly to growing up in the age of a rapidly expanding media circus: cable television, video games, etc., which divert one’s attention every 7 seconds or so. And so, it’s little surprise that the pro tennis players of today seem rather disinterested in tennis – this is simply a result of a short attention span. There’s always ‘something else to do’. The same can be said of tennis fans. It’s very difficult for most of the ‘MTV generation’ to sit in one place for more than 10 minutes at a time. As tennis matches generally endure longer than 10 minutes, the audience is a very transient one. Golf does not suffer from this simply due to neither the majority of its pro players, nor the majority of its fans, belonging to the younger ‘MTV generation’.

The golf course has in recent times become an extension of the white collar office. Business can be discussed while walking from ball to ball something you can't do in tennis. In some perhaps many companies promotion chances are increased if an employee is known socially by management. Playing golf rather than tennis is far more likely to get you into the right social circles.

With some luck scratch golfers can and do hit hole-in-ones, they can achieve 1 under par on some holes like a pro and they can hit a lucky 30foot putt. However in tennis no amount of luck will allow you to hit a 140mph+ serve like Roddick and the chances of hitting a 115mph+ second serve ace on the T like Sampras are far lower than a 30foot putt.

Great quote, Hendricks! I'm not sure if it's because I am aging/maturing or the pro game has just gotten boring to me, but I really don't pay much attention to it these days. The only player that really excites me is Federer. Today's tennis is like watching a game of pong: back/forth, back/forth, back/forth. No one in at net, no one using finesse/slice as much as they could. I know there have been more great matches but the last truly engaging match I saw was the Wimby final between Goran and Rafter in 2001. I long for the "good ole' days" of the mid to late 80's and early 90's. When I was in high school, I would play sick just to stay home during the opening week of the French Open. I would schedule my summer jobs around Wimby. I would spend all day on Super Saturday watching US Open tennis. Not anymore. I am on the opposite side of Deuce concerning the separation between pros and recreational players. I love watching athletes do what I can only dream of doing. I was an all-state basketball player and played on ranked teams my junior and senior years of high school.
My school was also in close proximity to national power Oak Hill Academy. Let me tell you, there is a difference blue chip athletes and run of the mill D1 athletes. I became a mere mortal when matched up with the likes of Jerry Stackhouse, Jeff McInnis and Ron Mercer. I love watching 360 tomahawk dunks. I love to see a 60 yard pass hit a player right on the numbers. I love to see Tiger smoke a 360 yard drive. I love to see Bonds smack homers into McCovey Cove. IMHO, there is too much parity in pro tennis. It can be good or bad. For me, parity is great with the NFL. Even the Bengals have a legitimate shot at the playoffs this year. But no one really cares to see the 200th ranked player for Turkmenistan upset Hewitt in the 1st round. At least I don't.

Everyone is playing golf these days. Truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, kids, teens, grannies, can all be seen at a course on any given day. It's fun, it's challenging, it doesn't require too much effort. You can drink beer while you play. You can conduct business. You can catch up with old friends/family. You can take your time and enjoy the day. And love it or hate it, more often than not there is high drama on the last few holes of a tourney. Phil's last put a few weeks ago was drama. Where is the drama in pro tennis? Maybe we think there are dramatic moments but apparently the general population doesn't.

No one has mentioned what a poor job TV has done covering tennis. No background info on players, their conditioning regimes are like that of Ironman athletes! TV packages a match to suit THEIR needs, not an overview of what its like to attend a match. True a Roddick can beat a Malisse but its still fine tennis.

Golf is hard as hell to learn, I've heard 10yrs from my buddies. Tennis is pure fun for kids, sure its got a learning curve but unless you've made the effort to see a Masters/Major you'll rarely see a Power Game of tennis.

I don't see the personalities in Golf, sorry its just a bunch of geezers happy to make Senior Golf money. Bunch of Bob Hope types, cracking enough jokes to keep their face on TV.

I say use TV's amazing pin point focus to show the inside story of the game. The court is such a "controlled environment", you can guarantee good angles, crowd shots.

I was at Indian Wells, man it was a tennis fans dream, 17 courts, tons of action. Haven't most of the Majors been sold out? AO was a huge local success.

The announcers are bored, Cliffie is just mailing it in, Pmac is too comfortable, but the tennis is first class.

I'm very glad to hear that you have seen some big crowds at a handful of events, but attendance depends quite heavily on how many players show up, and which ones. This is not enough to ensure the overall health of tennis. The men's and women's tours consists of 60 to 70 events and over 200 players each -- and four or five tournaments with good gate receipts a year cannot support them.

Overall financial health has almost nothing to do with gate receipts, and everything to do with sponsors and networks, who are the ones that put up the prize money and pay the production bills, and even build the grandstands.

Sponsors are perpetually unhappy with tennis -- the women have now had three different title sponsors in 10 years, as companies like Sanex have repeatedly bailed on the sport. On the mens tour, five of the nine so-called top tier events last year were for a time without corporate sponsors.

Basically, companies are sick of putting up huge prize money and getting too little in return.

what do you mean i am supposed to run for the balls? that's the prob w. tennis in this this country anyway (USA). we've become fat and lazy and golf is pastoral and not much exercise really because now they even make it tougher for a golfer to walk let alone walk and carry your bag &lt;that's why i quit golf>. so unless you are playing speed golf you can be fat and lazy. i dont even consider golf a sport..it's more of an activity. and tennis aint easy to play. also people want instant gratification. back in the 80's boom of tennis, the boom was shortlived. all kinds of people were picking up racquets back then and didnt have the patience to practice and get good, so they switched to racquetball which became very popular where i was at for a while because it is much easier to play. then it went from racquetball to nautilus/gym. tennis will always be kind of an elitist sport in my opinion. just think if some of the real athletes from other sports played pro tennis instead, how deep the field would be? ed

Unfortunately for tennis, it involves no violence, blood, concusions, fist fights, or bodily contact. I can guarantee that if the tie-break was replaced by a five minute, no holds barred, last man standing fight there would be millions of people watching every match and screaming for 6/6 to happen.

Golf is major in Europe, alot of the worlds top 50 are european and the success of the European Ryder Cup team means that people now enjoy the game of golf and kids dream of holing the winning put for the Ryder Cup.

I think the TV has a lot to do with it. One, like someone already said, there's a huge audience of old boomers who would much rather watch old geezers like themselves walk around on grass. So advertising money floats more towards golf than tennis.

Two, ESPN doesn't do a good job of presenting it. PMac and Drysdale just wing their way through match after match, repeating the same info over and over about the players ("This Guga is one laid-back, surfer dude... ). Dissing non-Americans (PMac: "Oh that's just HORRIBLE" when a non-Roddick/Agassi/Blake/Fish) commits an errror. Newsflash for Mr. Patrick Mc Enroe, you never progressed far beyond the TOP 30, so quit dissing Top Ten'ners like Coria, etc... just because they'll never play for your Davis Cup team...

Any "thing" is considered to be dying when the generation that experienced that "thing" in its so called hey-day witnesses a decline in that "thing." Any decline. The NBA is in decline, as is MLB, NFL, tennis, figure skating, Indy car racing, Star Trek, politics, movies, our respective bodies, etc. If tennis is dying, all these other things are dying, too (and guess what? We are dying). Want to compare the derivative of the respective rates of decline? Show me viewership/advertising/ticket sales numbers. Otherwise you're just ranting.

Here's where I look like a genius: in 10-20 years, when generation Y fails to steward its sports (snowboarding, surfing, whatever) to their children, we can do a find and replace on Ms. Jenkins' article and replace "tennis" with any one of those extreme sports. Bank on it.

Want to see tennis get really ugly? When we start applying information technology used in baseball/football/basketball (i.e. querying databases to show film for every third and long this team faced in the last year/every pitch this guy has thrown facing full counts/ever second serve this guy has hit when down break point/etc.) and tennis becomes more about keeping the other guy from doing what he does best - tennis will be even more dead then.

The criteria is winning matches, not something based on opinion like stroke aesthetics, or what racket you use, or how charismatic and commercially appealing you were. History doesn't care how you do it.

Sampras is the poster boy for this position. Just win. Think he played the way he did to satisfy some bozo in the cheap seats, or some luddite with an internet connection? Heck no. Pistol Pete and that baseline bashing, pure drive swinging junior are cut from the same cloth. To whine about how people play is barely different then whining about what people wear - it's all just style. Substance is your win/loss record.

I've often thought the game itself was OK but the scoring tends to be a bit tedious at times. I mean, how many of us really get excited in a match till say the 7th game or the breaker when someone gets a chance to break his opponent and/or win the set? We literally have to "endure" those early moments in a match till it gets interesting later on. Also, those change-overs tend to wear on you as a spectator after a while. (The introduction of the first change-over after the third game was such a good idea). I think the governing bodies need to make an attempt to try some thing new (on a trial basis at some small tournaments maybe) instead of simply sticking to something that dates back to the Victorians.

PMac and Drysdale just wing their way through match after match, repeating the same info over and over about the players ("This Guga is one laid-back, surfer dude... ). Dissing non-Americans (PMac: "Oh that's just HORRIBLE" when a non-Roddick/Agassi/Blake/Fish) commits an errror. Newsflash for Mr. Patrick Mc Enroe, you never progressed far beyond the TOP 30, so quit dissing Top Ten'ners like Coria, etc... just because they'll never play for your Davis Cup team...

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This is just a bald-faced lie. I've never ever heard PMac or Cliff ever diss a non-American player. In fact, during Nasdaq-100, Cliff was very passionate about getting viewers to tune in to watch the Coria-Gonzales semifinal. They have nothing but praise for non-American players. Carillo is always slobbering over Federer. He's not American last I checked.

It sounds like it's the usual selective hearing on your part. Because you just hate the American players or Pat Mac?

Sally is obsessed with this topic. She did a Sports Illustrated article on this almost ten years ago and after Goran won Wimbledon wrote another article about how boring tennis is and ridiculing Goran because he didn't have a physique (seriously, do a search through the Washington Post archives). Basically, she rode her daddy's coat tails into the journalism business and has contributed nothing except that SI article, so she continues to fall back on this subject as a way of keeping her name in the news.

I'm glad tennis is not as popular as golf. The 70's and 80's tennis boom created a wealth of nearby courts that are underused today which makes it easy for me to play for free. I also play golf and am glad that I don't see the crowds at the golf course at the tennis courts.

I sometimes wonder how equipment changes have impacted the popularity of tennis. The manufacturers would have us believe that the light weight high-tech racquets improve a persons ability to play. I would disagree though. Many people new to tennis buy these racquets then find they have serious arm problems. Soon, they give it up. Typically, people playing and enjoying the sport follow the professionals of that sport.

Additionally, US Tennis is predominately hard court. If I only played on hard court, I wouldn't be able to play near as much. In fact, as I age, playing tennis on a hard court becomes less desirable. Maybe that's why tennis in FL is so popular.

Sally Jenkins. Who gave her the job ? Her uncle. She knows zip, zero, nada, about tennis and seems to have a chip on her shoulder about the sport. I read her previous article about tennis and was going to use it against the Post when at first they weren't going to give my daughter All=Met Player of the Year as an example of their ignorance. I would not waste my time reading this one.